


On Aman's Shore

by Plant_Murderer



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Poetry, poetry and a short story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-09 23:43:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17414810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Plant_Murderer/pseuds/Plant_Murderer
Summary: "No stain would be on Lorien when it arose in might/ No stain on lands but bloodied hands did clasp its dream-seed tight"  A poem and then a short story depicting Galadriel (at the time still Artanis/Nerwen) in the first kinslaying and in the immediate aftermath.





	On Aman's Shore

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Myth979](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myth979/gifts).



> Things it's good to know, sorry if this is common knowledge:
> 
> Falmari = the branch of the Teleri at Aman = Wave-folk   
> Noldor= Deep/Wise Elves   
> Galadriel (use name) = Artanis (father name) = Nerwen (mother name)   
> Atya = Daddy

When waves and wisdom joined as one in light of sacred trees,

When waves and wisdom joined as one, they planted four great seeds,

Three princes who to Mandos flew ere western lands did fall,

And noble maid whose doom and aim was to stand over all

 

Fair Artanis who shone from birth as if by Varda blessed,

Began her days in Tirion in sight of Elbereth

And in the reach of Melkor’s voice, like Fëanor so bold

His mastery the tool he used to craft his vengeance cold

 

The holy silmarils began in thoughts of her bright hair,

Telperion and Laur’lins lights tis said are captured there,

That precious glow made rarer still by spider’s awful feast,

The want of it forced skillful hands and drove them to the east.

 

Then Artanis wished for a realm to rule for all her days,

When Wisdom fled through dark and dread, she hastened to the waves,

There found she Nold’rin swords raised high against Falmari kin,

There found she wrath at Nold’rin greed thus Nerwen entered in.

 

Her bow was of Falmari make, her arrows split the sky,

They flew and pierced the skilled hearts fierce keen as a battle cry,

Her foes sought ships, and ships they stole, through blood on Aman’s shore,

But darts that dove from Nerwen’s bow drove some to Namo’s door.

 

The final win, the final loss, as Fingon joined the fray,

Confusion ruled Fingolfin’s folk, they joined in rage, to slay,

When all was done and understood and Doom lay close at hand,

The mingled blood of her two kins did mar both sea and sand.

 

No stain would be on Lorien when it arose in might,

No stain on lands but bloodied hands did clasp its dream-seed tight,

As exiled with her Nold’rin kin, she braved the grinding cold,

And crossed the sea before the moon rose up in days of old.

 -Excerpted from a translation of the Lay of the Lady of Light

 

Artanis fled through the star-lit darkness as though the Valar themselves gave chase. She wasn’t altogether certain that they did not, though the weeping of Nienna was loud in her ears.

In truth, Artanis too mourned the loss of the trees. Their light had been present at every moment she’d known before these. How pale were the stars by comparison? Yet even in her grief she ran, hastening east and bounding over stony ground. She scaled darkened hills, moving ever toward the promise of lands, and the chance to be a Lady in deed as much as by birth.

Soon, she would have a realm that she could shape to her liking. She had not been made to be the kept pet of the high ones, no more than she had been made to be the servant of her uncle’s wrath and ends. She swore no oaths, seeking only her rightful place and honor. 

Artanis would ask of her Mother’s kin a vessel that could bear her east and spare her the hardships of the northern ice. In earlier youth, she and her mother had worked beside them. She knew the worth of their ships, but too she knew her place with the Falmari. They had never refused her even the smallest of requests. The daughter of a princess, she had been well loved.

When at last she came to the peaks of the high hills and looked down on the shores of her kin and those of her mother, what she found there were sights and sounds that would haunt her all the days of her endless life. 

Born in peaceful and undying lands, death had been for her as a distant rumor. Beasts died at the hands of hunters, far from sight. Fish died in their nets out at sea. As she hastened towards her mother's kin, she saw them dying as beasts, wounded by the forged weapons of the Noldor. Fires had been lit and a haze of smoke made the scene seem a dark vision, but the screams and the acrid smell of the air proclaimed the awful truth. In shock, she crept closer though all her spirit flinched back in the face of the slaughter, as swords were challenged with little beyond rocks and arrows.

Artanis listened to the words of the Falmari as they called out for their lives and a return to order.

“Brothers! Sisters! A shadow is upon you and you act unwisely in your haste!   Spare us! Leave us! Set aside your arms and make your peace with them who have led us to this place for our good.”

She saw how Fëanor and his kin pursued the ships which were the treasures and labors of her sea-loving people; how they cast torn and bleeding bodies to the surf and grabbed at or and rigging. She saw the pained last gasps of cousins and friends. She could stand by no longer.

“Uncle! Cousins!” She called to them running now towards the fray, “Your quarrel is not with them, but with the Valar! ”

“Our quarrel is with any who stands betwixt us and our ends,” Caranthir called back with a sneer. “Take up arms or be silent, Princess.”

“Then I shall be Nerwin,” she thought darkly, “and the strength and will that my mother saw in me will serve her kin a final time ere I depart.”

Taking up a bow and bolt of arrows from a fallen kinsman, she took aim. By the light of the stars, before the moon and sun, the elf-maid who would grow into the Lady of Light did spill her first blood. Him who she pierced stood at her cousin’s side. In shock he ripped the arrow from his neck, adding his blood to the mingled drips and spray on Caranthir’s face. Caranthir roared his rage and it seemed to blot out the sounds of battle and death in its ferocity.

Nerwin felt her heart harden as his companion choked and fell; as hands were washed in his blood, combining with and covering that of her kinsmen. A hand brushed her arm, urging her forward, and she looked to see another archer preparing to take aim. There was no time to mourn. They’d thought ships worth the taking of life? They’d named their terms plainly. No ship would leave their harbor unless the Noldor paid for it with their own.

Fell wrath was kindled in her. She raised her bow and the hiss of her arrows through the cooling air told any who heard it how she felt about the slaying of her kin and the attempted theft of their greatest works.

Tall she was, and glorious to behold, her hair a glimmering helm that drew the eyes of Noldor and Falmari alike.

“Come Artanis,” some called to her, for she was no less a royal to her father’s clan. “Renounce these feeble followers. Ride away with us on your ships and take what belongs to you in the east.”

“I will have what is mine,” she sneered in reply and her darts found marks which turned their enticements to shrieks of agony. Hers were the lives of her twain peoples. Hers had been the right to ask for what these rapacious fools took by force.

“Our princess knows her heritage, fight on! Stand with her!”  Other voices called and Nerwen accepted the arrows that were thrust towards her until she took up a blade from a fallen foe. She would leave them this vision of her, a warrior and kinswoman defending them, to offer her mother in the time to come.

They fought without hope of true victory and yet defeat was not wholly certain until, over the hills that divided them from the rest of the island came Fingon, and with him Fingolfin’s host.

They heard the voices of Fëanor and his clan and rallied to their cause, for surely the Falmari must be backed by the valar to make such a stand. What else would drive stone slingers to dream of victory against tools made for the splitting of spirit from skin and bone?

They had not seen the battle’s beginning and would not heed the cries of those they assumed had begun the bloodshed. The Falmari faltered in the face of this second host, and Fëanor and his followers hastened forth. They took the ships, shoving bodies from the decks as dust brushed from clothing.

Artanis turned and faced the host that had allowed this as they watched the ships shrink in the distance. The fire of battle left her then, but the desire that had driven her before remained.

Her realm lay yet across the sea, and she would reach it. If she and her brothers had to walk with murderers and would-be thieves to come to those lands, she would bear that and more. She washed in a small stream as the slaughter slowed to a cold, dark end.

Artanis joined the host at the back, and she watched them. She looked down; searching out bloody footprints though of course there would be none. They could take the ships but could not bear even _the blood_ of the unwilling back to the lands where their foremothers and fathers had woken.  Her brothers marched nearer to front. She was relieved to glimpse no sign that they had joined in the bloody scene.

Artanis looked to her own father, who walked near her. He seemed pale and sick with the deeds he’d witnessed. Perhaps he grieved also to leave her mother, but she did not ask and could not know.

As they crested the final hills between Valinor and the frozen sea, a voice boomed so that surely all the world must take heed. The voice of Mandos spoke thus:

“Tears unnumbered ye shall shed; and the Valar will fence Valinor against you, and shut you out, so that not even the echo of your lamentation shall pass over the mountains […]”

Around her, Artanis saw some turn and walk back towards the homes they’d left. They whispered of repentance and set aside their causes and desires. She wondered how small they must have been, how petty to be so easily put away.

Her father joined them and her heart, already so sore, knew more sorrow still. She followed him with her eyes, watching as he stopped to seek out and to touch brows with each of his sons, offering swift words as they parted, perhaps forever. When he came to her, he moved to speak but the words seemed to change ere they left his lips. What began as a plea came forth as encouragement of a sort.

“Live well, and govern in mercy those who will be blessed to follow you,” he bid her. “Remember your mother, who has been wiser than I, and seek out her kin. Know that her love and mine will defy all rules of exile.”

“My thoughts will go where the echoes of my lamentations may not, and where my exaltations would be silenced out of spite,” she replied. “Have peace, _Atya_. If I am dispossessed, then it is by choice. I do not belong there, and _theirs_ are not the lands I seek.”

With him she turned and they looked down on the grinding ice. Even from where they stood, they could hear the sounds that gave it its name: Helcaraxë.

Artanis felt her father’s hand upon her shoulder and savored that final warmth from him before, too soon, it was gone.

She walked through the crowd to find her brothers. They, more than any, knew the regrets and losses that she already carried, excluding one.

They would never understand the fierce regret that the throat she had pierced as she joined in the battle had not been Caranthir’s.

He would not survive another kinslaying, she knew suddenly, and with the satisfying heft of truth.  She knew this, and as she took her first steps onto the ice, she smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading this, let me know what you think. I modeled the poem after the song Galadriel sings in LOTR. The doom of Mandos is, of course, a direct quote.


End file.
